


Coffee Shop Costumes

by distractionpie



Series: JeanMarco Revival 2019 [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amputee Marco Bott, Coffee Shops, Costume planning, Established Relationship, M/M, Past Car Accident, Past Injuries, discussion of trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 00:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21170057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: It's been a rough year. After spending last Halloween in hospital and most of the year struggling through recovery, Marco is determined to make the most of the festivities and embrace the silver lining of his injuries in the form of all the new costume potential they've unlocked. But when his friends find out what he's planning, they point out a potential problem of which he's been painfully unaware.





	Coffee Shop Costumes

Marco’s not an artist, but he’s pretty proud of the plan drawn out in front of him.

This Halloween, the costume contest crown will be his.

He’s not a competitive guy, he’s come close before and never minded when the prize eventually went to somebody else. Half the fun is getting to admire what other people have come up with. It just that this year, he is really is sure his plans are going to be impossible to top.

After all, what could make a zombie costume cooler than actual missing limbs?

Even as somebody with a gift for finding silver-linings, the car accident was a nightmare, so he’s determined to enjoy the small perk of taking advantage of his injuries for this. It’s an idea that’s been percolating in his mind for a while now. Last Halloween he’d barely been out of hospital, heavily dosed up on meds and sleeping more often than not, and in no state to celebrate. But now he’s back, and he’s determined make the most of his situation to make the holiday better than ever, rather than letting what happened drag him down. He’s had time to get used to the changes and while he’s still not always comfortable with the scars, making them into something fun feels like a good way to reclaim ownership over his body and knowing he can joke about it will hopefully set other people more at ease too.

So, zombie, in the most over the top slasher-flick style he can muster, because one of the side effects of living in a questionable neighbourhood means the party is unlikely to be interrupted by trick-or-treaters and while Marco will be sad to miss out on the cuteness seeing the fun costumes of little kids, going to a strictly adults only party does mean that people are free to go wild with their costumes.

Though it also means while planning he had to pick his seat carefully so that other coffee shop patrons don’t look over his shoulder and get freaked out.

Of course there are some coffee shop patrons who aren’t so easily disturbed, like Eren and Armin who wave as they walk in and come over to join him as soon as they have their coffee.

“Hey Marco, what’re you working on?”

“My Halloween costume,” he says, flipping the notebook over so Armin and Eren can see his doodles.

He’s expecting a dramatic reaction, the art isn’t great but the idea is, and he trusts that they’ll be able to use their imaginations to predict how good his execution is going to be.

He’s not expecting Armin to blanch and Eren to spill coffee down his front.

“Guys?”

“Uh… don’t you think that’s a little… ah…” Armin stutters, unusually lost for words.

“You want Jean to see you looking like that?” Eren blurts out, seemingly un-phased by the brown stain spreading across his shirt.

Marco rolls his eyes. Jean saw how he looked puking his guts up with the hangover from hell after underestimating Ymir’s punch at their first ever post-college Halloween party, he won’t be turned off by Marco going for a traditional costume rather than a sexy one. Anyway, Jean was the one who dragged him to haunted houses and snickered his way through the goriest of unrated movies, mocking the quality of the acting. "Yeah, Jean loves horror stuff."

"Well yes, but he likes the absurdity of it," Armin says slowly. "This feels like it might hit a little closer to home."

Marco frowns. Jean loves to laugh at over the top slasher movies and ghost hunter shows but he also had a stack of well thumbed Steven King books and a whole collection of seriously unsettling psychological horror type films. To act like he’d be freaked out by some pale make-up and fake blood suggests not understanding his love of the genre very well, but Armin and Jean are good friends and there’s a real worry in Armin’s eyes that stops Marco short. Armin comes across a little square but he’s best friends with Eren which would never work if he were the type to get worked up about little things, so if he’s looking that serious Marco isn’t just going to brush him off.

“Do you really think it’s too scary?” he asks. Sure, it’s messy, but not any worse that other things he’s seen at Halloween parties, like the year Armin and Mikasa had totally failed to stop Eren from strapping actual chainsaws to his arms or the time Armin and Krista took advantage of their vaguely similar appearances to pair up in an awe-inspiring but completely impractical headless-horseman costume. Actually, the more Marco thinks about it, the more he realises that Armin is the last person who should be calling out his costume as too extreme just because it’s gory.

“Under other circumstances or on somebody else I think it would pass,” Armin says and Marco’s stomach drops. For the most part he’s as open-minded as they come, but while he’s getting better the one topic doesn’t want to keep going over the accident and he especially doesn’t want people treating him differently because of it. The whole point of this costume was to show it was okay to treat what happened in a lighthearted way, so for Armin to be acting like what happened means Marco can’t wear a zombie costume is… well, he expected better from Armin. “I know you don’t like to talk about what happened, but…”

“I’m just not sure how it’s relevant,” Marco says, hating the sharp tone his voice slips into but unable to stop it. This is supposed to be about moving on and the way Armin and Eren are looking at him is ruining it.

"You didn't see what you looked like in the aftermath,” Armin says. “I... It is a great design, but on you I'm afraid the effect might be less zombie and more bad memories.”

Bad memories? Marco doesn’t even remember leaving the party that fateful night, let alone the accident, only that he’d woken up in hospital to learn that when he’d been cut out of the car they’d had to leave a few pieces behind. “What are you saying?”

“I think you ought to consider—”

“Oh, don’t dance around it,” Eren interrupts. “He’s saying that it’s great you’re comfortable with that shit, but you’d better at least warn Jean you’re doing it because it’s going to be fucking awkward if you set him off on some sort of trauma episode in the middle of the party.”

“Jean’s not traumatised,” Marco blurts out, then stops at the look on both of their faces. “Jean’s… you think he’s traumatised?”

“You were in that coma for over a month,” Armin reminds him gently. “It wasn’t a good time for anybody, and we only saw how bad things were post-surgery. Jean was the one who found you, who waited for the ambulance. That would be a lot for anyone to process.”

Marco shakes his head. Jean has been absolutely rock steady throughout his recovery, not without his worries but never slipping into the habit of reducing Marco to his victim-hood. Of everybody, he’d seemed the least perturbed by everything, only getting upset once — when Marco had voiced his own brief worry that Jean wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with somebody who wasn’t whole and even that outburst had ended with Jean firmly shutting concerns down and promising they’d get through things as a couple.

But at the time Marco had been so caught up in his own recovery, getting his strength back and adjusting to the prostheses, that he’d barely had the energy for anything else. Now he tries to remember his impression of Jean during that period, had he missed something, but all he can recall is Jean being absolutely clear that nothing had changed or would change between them and facing every challenge with determined calm.

“Don’t forget giving you first-aid,” Eren adds, grimacing. “He crashed on our couch because we live nearer to the hospital, and our water bill that month ended up sky high from the constant showering.”

Marco frowns. “Showering?”

“Because of the nightmares about being covered in your blood again.”

Armin glares at Eren, but Marco cuts him off. Eren might be tactless but sometimes blunt honesty is the best thing. “Jean was having nightmares? How did I not know about that?”

“He was holding it together for hospital visits,” Armin explains. “And by the time you were discharged he’d agreed to get some proper help, if only so that he’d be able to support you better. You should probably talk to him if you want details, but as his friend I’m suggesting that before you go ahead with this costume, you should consider what memories it might bring up.”

Marco looks down at the drawing his notebook, taking it in with fresh eyes. He’s been putting the accident behind him and that had made it easy to just see the over the top zombie that was bound to wow people at the Halloween party, it has never occurred to him what other associations the fake blood and pale makeup might carry.

In all the chaos of his recovery, Jean was the one part of his life that hadn’t changed, always by his side, driving him to physio sessions and doctors appointments, making plans for how Marco could get back into working without losing out because of the months spent on medical leave, and borrowing tools to make the adaption their apartment needed when the landlord wouldn’t step up. He’d been the one holding their world together. But how often had he already been up when Marco had woken in the night?

And even when he hadn’t been, he’d always woken shortly after, roused by the sounds of Marco’s distress or softly remarking that the bed was too cold without him — even though Jean had always been a deep sleeper before the accident and should have grown accustomed to sleeping alone while Marco was hospitalised.

He’s jerked from his thoughts by Eren’s sudden, “Oh shit!”, as Armin leans over, flipping Marco’s notebook shut, and Marco looks up to see Jean walking over to their table.

He’s smiling, face alight with an idle cheerfulness at running into friends, but Marco can’t help making a study of him. Had the shadows beneath his eyes been this dark and deep before the accident? Is the cut-glass edge of his cheekbones a by-product of weight-loss? His hair is back to its natural ashy tone and growing shaggy rather than the bleach pale crisp undercut he used to wear it in and the timing of that definitely does match up to the accident and Marco hadn’t considered it to be anything other than a coincidence but now he wonders if Jean had simply got bored of bleaching or if his return to a more natural look had been because he’d been so occupied with Marco that he’d had no energy left for self care.

“Jeez, all of you getting coffee? Is the call of the pumpkin spiced latte being back really—” Jean pauses. “Hey, what are you all looking so serious and pissed off for?”

"Halloween. Armin was just suggesting you might not be able to handle--"

“Couples costumes!” Marco interrupts Eren. “Since we're cutting it kind of close, it might be difficult to get something ready.”

“You mean you haven’t started preparing your outfit yet?” Jean says incredulously. “Halloween is less than a week away, usually you’re shopping by now.”

Marco feels his face heat. Of course Jean would know him well enough to be suspicious. “Well, I started with a few ideas, but none of them are suited to a couples costume. And I really want to try that this year.”

Jean grimaces. For all his love of horror, he’s never shown much enthusiasm for dressing up at Halloween, he usually goes for character t-shirts as costumes or plain clothes with strawberry sauce fake blood that he called a vampire costume and Marco has never pushed him because dressing up was fun, but there was also a lot to be said in favour helping Jean clean up the strawberry sauce off his body, so he had never entertained notions of talking Jean into a couples costume.

“Seriously?”

“You don’t have to,” Marco assures him, suddenly realising that he’s backing them into an unwanted corner with his improvised excuse: he doesn’t actually want to push Jean into something he won’t be happy with, but Jean has already set his jaw in an expression that Marco knows all too well means he’s going to be stubborn about this.

“Ignore Jaeger,” Jean says, “I’m not a coward. I’ll go as whatever you want.”

Marco considers pointing out that Eren hadn’t said that was his opinion, in fact Eren had been on the verge of thoughtlessly throwing Armin under the bus of Jean’s temper, but, since Jean and Eren had so much practise fighting and getting over it, perhaps that was better that risking a falling out between Jean and Armin that might end in real upset. Anyway, it’s hard to care about Eren’s irritated sputtering when faced with an open-ended offer like that. Jean ought to know better. Other friends mistake Marco for being all innocence and purity but Jean knows Marco’s not always above making the most of people’s trust in him. If Jean will dress as anything he wants… Crap. Jean’s just put an offer like that out there and since Marco hadn’t actually dreamed of getting him to dress up more than half-assedly let alone into a couples costume he doesn’t even have any good ideas.

“I… I’ll have to get back to you on that,” he admits. He hadn’t planned on ever pushing Jean to doing something like this, but now it’s been presented as a challenge from Eren there’s nothing Marco could do that would stop him from going through with it, so he might as well take advantage.

**Author's Note:**

> This, as you may have suspected, stemmed from trying to come up with an idea for day 5. Originally I was toying with the idea of zombie!Marco but then I was like, nope way too dark! So I moved onto zombie costume Marco except then I thought about Jean’s reaction to that and whoops it was too dark again. So this was born, and honestly with all the trauma stuff it's still pretty dark but I wasn't up for a third re-plot. Also the fact one year I went to a halloween party as a zombie but people kept guessing 'person from a car accident' which is what comes of hanging out with medical students.


End file.
